KANNAPOLIS, N.C.—Stetson Allie threw just 26.2 innings as a professional pitcher.

That’s an ironic number for a 22-year-old with miles left on his marathon of a journey through the Pittsburgh Pirates’ farm system. The good news is Allie, now a former pitcher turned slugging first baseman, already has hit the proverbial wall every runner dreads—more on those two thoroughly disastrous appearances on the mound in April 2012 in a moment—and fought through that adversity.

The final stretches of a marathon—literal or figurative—aren’t exactly easy, either, but there’s a renewed bounce in Allie’s step these days.

“As a position player, I’ll get frustrated, but five minutes later, I’m fine. As a pitcher, it wasn’t like that,” Allie says while leaning against the rolled-up tarp about 75 minutes before a road game at Kannapolis last Tuesday. “I’d have a bad day, and it would just drag the whole week. As a position player, it just doesn’t drag anymore. I’ve been so much more laid back, loose, having fun with things.”

That’s a welcome change, for the prospect and for the franchise.

Allie, an intimidating 6-foot-2, 238-pound presence at the plate, is crushing the ball for the Class A West Virginia Power this spring. He leads the South Atlantic League with a 1.055 OPS, 47 RBIs and 199 total bases, is tied for first with 13 homers and is third with a .340 batting average. The Pirates don’t have much in the way of power-hitting first basemen in the organization, so Allie’s development has been huge for the franchise.

“With his competitiveness, it’s not much of a surprise he’s doing so well,” West Virginia manager Michael Ryan says.

Considering his circumstances, though, it’s at least a mild surprise.

The Pirates selected Allie in the second round of the 2010 draft as a righthanded starter and gave him a way-over-slot $2.25 million signing bonus to pass on playing college ball for North Carolina. Even though he had pitched for only a year in high school, his raw tools—specifically, a fastball that regularly reached 98 mph—made him a worthwhile risk for a rebuilding franchise looking to load its system with power arms. Baseball America rated him as the No. 3 prospect in the Pittsburgh organization before he ever threw a pitch.

Allie started seven of his first eight pro games for the State College Spikes in the New York-Penn League (short-season Class A) in 2011 before moving to the bullpen in August for his final seven appearances. He faced a total 135 batters in 26 innings and posted a 6.58 ERA. An optimist would notice he struck out 28 batters and allowed just 20 hits; a pessimist would counter with his 29 walks, nine hit batters and seven wild pitches.

The raw tools remained, well, raw.

After what he considered a successful 2012 spring training, Allie was assigned to West Virginia. In his first outing, on a cold day in Hagerstown (Md.), he retired just one batter in the first inning. Then, after taking a few weeks off to rest a sore elbow, he entered in the seventh inning against Charleston (S.C.). Again, he only managed one out. In those two appearances combined, he faced 12 batters—he walked eight, gave up one single, hit one batter, struck out one, and got one groundout.

Something had to change.

The Pirates sent Allie to extended spring training, where they did everything they could to help him rediscover the joy of playing baseball. They let him close games as a pitcher, and they put him in the lineup to hit on days when he wasn’t scheduled to throw.

Hitting made everything better. For the first time as a professional, Allie was throwing strikes consistently, which was nice. At the plate, he was knocking line drives off outfield fences—and over them—which was great.

Allie says he never doubted his ability to make the big leagues, eventually, as a pitcher. But during this time in extended spring, he became very aware that his rate of improvement as a hitter—an everyday activity that provided everyday feedback, which meshes well with his personality—exceeded his rate of improvement as a pitcher.

That was intoxicating.

The time arrived for a serious conversation with the decision-makers in the front office.

“They asked me what I wanted to do,” Allie remembers. “I said I didn’t want to pitch anymore unless I was going to close. And if they still wanted me to start, then I wanted to hit full time. They were like, ‘We feel like you’re too young to be a closer. Try hitting, and if hitting doesn’t work out, you’ll always have a good arm.’ And I was like, ‘Screw it. Let’s hit. I want to do this. I want to do the everyday thing.’ ”

It wasn’t that simple, though.

Allie wasn’t a late-round pick who signed for a nominal amount. He was the high-profile kid with a 98-mph fastball and $2.25 million signing bonus, an amount he wouldn’t have sniffed if he’d been drafted as a hitter a few rounds later. And making the decision after just 26 2/3 innings over 17 games—an incredibly small sample size—wasn’t easy for a franchise that didn’t need another draft bust.

“That’s real money that was invested, not Monopoly money, so there are people that invested that money who want to talk through it,” says Larry Broadway, the Pirates’ director of minor league operations. “Real conversations had to be had behind the scenes, and ultimately we all got together and made the decision that this was best for the kid and best for the organization, for at least the short term and possibly the long term.”

The weight was lifted.

“I never looked back. It was kind of a relief, for me and my family,” Allie says. “I was going to be drafted as a hitter, and I was going to college to hit. I knew I could do it.”

THE TRANSITION BEGINS

Allie isn’t the first to attempt such a transition, of course.

With the St. Louis Cardinals, Rick Ankiel made the most memorable such switch since Babe Ruth. Brian Bogusevic, Adam Loewen and Micah Owings have made the move, too, in recent years, but it’s Ankiel’s success that resonates with the Pirates’ farmhand.

“I feel I’m in the same boat,” Allie says. “He couldn’t throw strikes, he never looked back, went to a hitter and knew he could do it. He believed in himself and just said, ‘I’m going to hit, I’m going to make the big leagues and I’m going to make a career of it.’ ”

The second phase of Allie’s career started in mid-June 2012 with the rookie league Gulf Coast League Pirates, under the tutelage of hitting coach Mike Lum, a lifelong baseball man. Lum’s 15-year major league career ended in 1981, and aside from one year playing in Japan he has been a hitting instructor ever since.

“He worked with me non-stop. Smartest guy I know,” Allie says. “He was giving me so much good stuff. Every day, we went and hit together, one-on-one. I watched video with him. It just seemed that every day I was getting better as a hitter.”

One of Lum’s biggest challenges with Allie—aside from helping him recognize and adjust to a curveball—was convincing him not to try and crush every pitch over the left-field fence. Allie’s desire to prove he was a legitimate power-hitting prospect—that the front office had made the right choice to let him hit—was at times irresistible and overwhelming. And it was often crippling; in 42 games, Allie hit just three homers, struck out 50 times and posted an underwhelming slash line of .213/.314/.340.

The result of Lum’s work might not have immediately translated into decent statistics, but the repetitions were important and the lessons stuck with Allie. Away from the whirlwind events of a tumultuous year, Allie spent the offseason applying those teachings—and working incessantly with the curveball pitching machine.

He entered spring training this year with a confidence level he hadn’t known since high school. The change was evident.

“In spring training, I saw he’s very mature about the strike zone,” says Orlando Merced, the 13-year MLB veteran who is West Virginia’s hitting coach. “For a young kid, that’s very impressive. He’s got amazing power, and his work habits have been great. A lot of the success he’s had so far is because of the work he’s put in in the cage.”

After two hitless games to start the 2013 season—five strikeouts in eight ominous at-bats—Allie caught fire, batting .475 with five home runs and 15 RBIs during a nine-game hitting streak. His first homer, with his dad in the stands at West Virginia, was a walkoff solo shot in the 11th inning that gave the Power win No. 1 on the season.

That moment was, as Allie describes many things these days, awesome.

ONGOING ADJUSTMENTS

Allie is far from a finished product

For all his success this year, he still has struck out 61 times in 49 games, a rate that must improve. And even though he is a relative newbie as a professional hitter, he is one of the older players in the South Atlantic League.

Merced talks with Allie on a daily basis about two things: loading his hands and getting his foot down as the pitcher brings the ball out of his glove, and being hard-headed at the plate. “Hard-headed” is an organizational phrase coined by Jeff Livesey, the Pirates’ minor league hitting coordinator, and preached by Merced. It’s a discipline thing: Know your strengths and stick with them on every at-bat.

For Allie, that means staying away from pitches on the inner half of the plate early in the count, and waiting for pitches he can drive up the middle or take to right field. That’s where his power shines. Not long after he finished his interview with Sporting News, Allie pounded two home runs in the contest against Kannapolis—his third multi-homer game already this season.

He drove the first one, off a middle-away fastball, well over the fence in right-center, just to the left of the 375-foot sign. The second one, off a curveball deeper in the count, was a line-drive shot that went out to left field. Last July, Allie probably would have tried to pull a fastball in that location and then swung and missed at that curveball.

Defensively, he still is learning first base. He played third base in high school and in his first few games with the GCL Pirates, but his eventual position is likely at first. He spends lots of time learning to dig throws out of the dirt, and the control issues that plagued him as a pitcher still rise up occasionally.

Last Tuesday, actually, his defensive work during BP left much to be desired. He fielded grounders well enough, but had all kinds of trouble making the throw to second base. One toss wound up at least 10 feet wide of his intended target; two more hit the screen protecting second baseman Dilson Herrera.

“I just had a bad throwing day,” he says, shaking his head. “I wasn’t feeling good today, and you’re going to have those days.”

When he was a pitcher, those bad throws might have started a “here we go again” type of day, which might have led to a week of frustration and then another poor outing. As an everyday player, though, Allie has learned to have a short memory. He’d obviously long forgotten about those wayward throws by the time he drilled his pair of homers later that evening.

“I love it as a hitter,” he says. “You get a new day every day.”

This is the new Stetson Allie—hitting home runs, living in the moment and re-establishing himself as a future major leaguer at a new position. He’s happy, and the Pirates are pretty pleased, too.